Mr William Munro v Represented by: Mr S Miller - Solicitor Barrhead Travel 2007 Ltd — 2020

Mr Munro founded Barrhead Travel and, after the sale to Travel Leaders Group in February 2018, continued under a contract as Chairman and Founder on an ambassadorial, non-operational basis. The tribunal found that the parties understood his pre-sale salary of £161,000 would no longer be a cost to the business, and that his work after the sale was meant to be limited to approved special projects outside the day-to-day Barrhead Travel business. The difficulty arose because Mr Munro continued to work in a way that focused heavily on Barrhead Travel, including troubleshooting, using staff and resources, and working from the office, while TLG wanted him to step away from Barrhead and work from home on approved projects.

The tribunal accepted that by early May 2018 TLG had made clear that Mr Munro was to stop involving himself in Barrhead Travel and that the role of Chairman and Founder at subsidiary level had ceased to exist. It held that the requirements of Barrhead Travel 2007 Ltd for that work had ceased, so the reason for dismissal was redundancy within s.139 ERA 1996 and a potentially fair reason under s.98(2)(c). The tribunal also said that, if it were wrong about redundancy, it would have treated the reason as some other substantial reason based on business reorganisation and would have reached the same conclusion on fairness and remedy.

The dismissal was still unfair under s.98(4). The tribunal held that the TLG role offered on 23 May 2018 was suitable alternative employment in substance, but it was offered on an unreasonable basis because continuity of service was deliberately excluded, even though Mr Munro was entitled to have that service recognised without having to negotiate for it. The appeal was also flawed because Mr O'Hara accepted at face value comments from Mr Chacko that Mr Munro had been disruptive, without giving him a proper opportunity to answer that point. Reinstatement and re-engagement were refused because the role no longer existed and the relationship between the parties had broken down.

On remedy, the tribunal held that any compensatory award was reduced to nil because there was a 100% Polkey reduction and 100% contributory conduct. It also held that Mr Munro was not entitled to a basic award because he had already received a redundancy payment. Separately, the tribunal ordered payment of £2,754 net for the unpaid balance of notice pay.